We want the ability to predict outcomes, manage expectations, and limit risk/injury.
We want our businesses running smoothly, our relationships thriving, our bodies healthy, our finances stable. We want control.
Or if that word makes you feel some kind of way… We want “harmony”. Here’s the thing though, wanting control and gaining control ain’t the same.
But there is a way grasshopper. There is away to gain this harmonious life you desire. You can have control over everything in your life. Not some of it. Not the easy parts. Everything. It’s simple.
The answer is a single word. That word is discipline.
Discipline Is How You Win
This word usually makes most people uncomfortable because we know what comes with it. We know the sacrifice it demands, the consistency it requires, the ego it challenges.
I’ve spent over two decades in business consulting, helping organizations generate hundreds of millions in revenue. I’ve worked with six-figure entrepreneurs breaking into seven figures. I’m directed Fortune 500 and Inc 50 companies seeking transformation. Across every industry, every market, every level of success, the pattern remains the same. Discipline is how it gets done.
Discipline is how you’ll see success in your marriage. It’s how you’ll build the body you want. It’s how you’ll create the life you envision. It’s how you’ll scale your business beyond what you thought possible. It’s how you’ll cultivate friendships that actually matter.
Discipline is the answer.
But why discipline?
What Discipline Actually Means
Most people think discipline is about hustle culture, grinding yourself into exhaustion, or some rigid military-style existence that removes all joy from life. That’s not discipline. That’s punishment masquerading as productivity.
What’s real discipline? Well, look at the actual definition: Control gained by enforcing obedience and order.
Read that again slowly.
Control. Gained. By enforcing obedience and order.
By it’s definition, discipline is the key that unlocks everything for you. If you want control over any area of your life, your time, your money, your relationships, your business, your
You can’t manifest it. You can’t “affirm” your way through it. You can’t “try”.
You enforce obedience to what you know to be true. You create order in your current chaos. And through that obedience and order, you gain control.
The Two Parts of Discipline
As you can see Discipline has two essential components: obedience and order.
But obedience to What? To Who?
Obedience gets a bad reputation because people associate it with submission or weakness. But nah. Obedience in the context of discipline means you’re committed to following what you know to be true, even when it’s inconvenient. Especially when it’s inconvenient.
- The truth is, you should be saving money instead of, “treating yourself.”
- The truth is, you need to spend dedicated weekly time on business development and lead generation, but you keep filling that time with other work because it feels more urgent.
- The truth is, you need to have that difficult conversation with your partner instead of avoiding it.
- The truth is, it’s time to stop working 80-hour weeks and delegate tasks to your team. But you keep doing everything yourself because “it’s faster if I just do it.”
The question isn’t whether you know what to do. The question is whether you’ll be obedient to the truth you already know.
Most people fail here. They know the truth, but they rationalize, negotiate, and make exceptions. They exaggerate their shortcomings, they create their own obstacles, or they simply tell themselves “just this once.”
Elite Entrepreneurs don’t. We just don’t!
We understand how important it is to live in the reality of truth. Not “our truth”. But THE truth! Period. Not because it feels good, but because we’re committed to the outcome that it produces.
Order in Your Systems
The second component is order. This is about creating structure, systems, and patterns that support your goals rather than sabotaging them.
Order isn’t about inflexibility. It’s about establishing a framework that makes the right choices easier and the wrong choices harder.
Think about your morning routine. If you have order… the day’s priorities written down, coffee preset, gym bag in the car, you remove the friction from starting your day, replacing it with intention. If you wake up to uncertainty, you’re making a hundred micro-decisions before you’ve even had caffeine, each one an opportunity to drift off course.
Order creates predictability. Predictability creates momentum. Momentum creates results.
This applies to your business operations, your client delivery systems, your financial processes, your relationship rhythms. Order in these areas doesn’t constrain you, it frees you to focus your energy on what actually matters.
Why We Resist Discipline
Discipline requires us to do two things most people would rather avoid:
1. Acknowledge what we’re currently doing isn’t working
This requires humility. It means admitting that our current approach, however comfortable or familiar, is producing results we don’t want. For some, the hit on their self-perception is too great for them to swallow this pill.
2. Move beyond our feelings
Discipline means doing what needs to be done regardless of how we feel about it. Tired? Do it anyway. Not in the mood? Do it anyway. Don’t feel like it? Do it anyway.
This flies in the face of our culture’s current obsession with comfort and convenience. Discipline in private is where control is actually built.
Bringing It Together
Discipline doesn’t require some massive personality overhaul or superhuman willpower.
It requires:
- Clarity about what you need to do (Step 1: Identify the Gap in Accepted Truth)
- Determine to remove the daily negotiation (Step 2: Remove the Negotiation)
- Systems that support consistency (Step 3: Build Your Structure)
- Measurement to maintain awareness (Step 4: Track Your Obedience)
- Stakes that make it matter (Step 5: Enforce Consequences and Rewards)
Start with one behavior. Just one. Go through all five steps for that single disciplined action. Build it for 30 days until it’s automatic.
Then add another.
This is how Elite Entrepreneurs build the kind of discipline that creates control over everything. Not through willpower alone, but through strategic systems that make discipline the default.
You already know what you need to do. Now you know how to make yourself actually do it.
What Discipline Creates
It’s important to embrace discipline as a principle rather than treating it as a temporary strategy. When you do…
Your business becomes systematic rather than chaotic. You stop firefighting and start executing. You move from reactive to proactive. You build infrastructure that scales.
Your relationships deepen instead of deteriorate. You show up consistently. You honor your commitments. You become someone people can count on, not because you’re perfect, but because you’re disciplined.
Your body reflects your intentions instead of your impulses. You eat what serves your goals. You move because it’s on the schedule, not because you feel like it. You rest because it’s strategic, not because you’re avoiding hard things.
Your finances stabilize and grow. You spend according to plan, not according to emotion. You invest in assets, not liabilities. You build wealth systematically rather than hoping for windfalls. This is what control looks like. And discipline is how you get there.
Your Next Step
You have a choice right now. You can read this article, nod your head, maybe feel inspired for a moment, and then continue with the same patterns that have been producing the same results you don’t want.
Or you can choose discipline.
You pick one area, just one, where you’re going to enforce obedience to truth and create order in your systems. You can start today. Not tomorrow. Not Monday. Today.
The people who achieve what they want aren’t smarter than you (well some of them are and some of them are luckier too). But above all else, they’re more disciplined.
They’ve chosen to gain control by enforcing obedience and order. They’ve embraced the discomfort that comes with discipline because they know what it produces.
And that’s available to you too.
Now.